Anthropology

For over 10,000 years, the Indians of the Great Plains and the American bison were inextricably linked. Bison were a key species for both spirituality and survival. To kill a single buffalo, a 2,000-pound animal that can run 40 miles per hour, with nothing but spears and axes is no easy task, let...

Three times, they tried to push the herd out onto the ice, and three times, they failed. Scent alone wasn’t working. The wind dipped and swirled, and the daytime thaw and nightly freeze made the crusted snow impossibly noisy for stalking. The day was quickly turning to night and still they waited...

Tamara Thomsen has spent three decades diving and documenting shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, the coastal waters off North Carolina, and Canada’s Bay of St. Lawrence. She helped study the Civil War ironclad U.S.S. Monitor in its watery grave off Cape Hatteras in 2000. She also dived on the wreck of...

When romping in the woods, every now and then, we find evidence of previous hunters: a fire ring, shotgun shell, or meat pole. A reminder that our sojourn in a spot is temporary, that people have been hunting before us, and will continue to do so long after. Recently, scientists in Germany...

Two Detroit-area men were likely bullshitting in November 1985 when telling friends and loved ones they were heading north to hunt the second weekend of Michigan’s deer season. Instead of driving northwest 200 miles to his family’s cabin near White Cloud in west-central Michigan, David Tyll and his...

The audience packing the Grand Theatre in Wausau, Wisconsin, rose to its feet June 15, 2022, when Gordon Lightfoot took the stage at age 83. The loud, sustained ovation seemed only natural, even though such honors usually occur at a concert’s end, not its start. Then again, this was an older crowd...

Like most Americans who bring home dogs, recent U.S. presidents have turned renowned hunting breeds into lapdogs and lovable rug-sloths while living in the White House. Talk about a bipartisan effort. Whether it’s Gerald Ford’s golden retriever, Bill Clinton’s chocolate Labrador, or George W. Bush’s...

Americans have long carved their marks, names, and news into trees, even with little assurance anyone would read the inscriptions before time and nature rotted them away. Some marks, however, were recognized and respected. Starting in 1691, the English crown claimed title to New England’s best white...

Archaeologists in Germany have unearthed the oldest known large-scale collection of human-made wooden tools. The artifacts, which date back about 300,000 years, were discovered at a site near Schöningen, Germany. The found collection includes some early human-made hunting weapons, including wooden...

Retired Wisconsin Conservation Warden Jerry Carow doesn’t need his notes or case files to recall the most famous person he ever cited for failure to report an accidental shooting. Carow, in fact, thinks he cited only one person for that offense during his 30-year career. After all, hunting-related...

Archeologists working in Israel have found what they believe could be the “earliest evidence of the use of sound in hunting.” The 12,000-year-old whistles were made from the wing bones of Eurasian coot and teal, and replicas manufactured from mallard bones produce sounds that imitate birds of prey...

On a late September day in Montana, a group of my colleagues and I here at MeatEater collaborated with a team of archeologists to butcher a bison using an Ice Age tool kit made of stone. The goal was to create a collection of tools and bones that might help unravel the mystery of how our fellow...